PRAYER

resources in print and on Web

(Please, use this link for personal prayer requests.)

Index > Prayer > Prayer Resources

Some books on prayer

Anthony Bloom, *Beginning To Pray* (Paulist, 1979)
George Buttrick, *Prayer* (Abingdon, 1942)
Judson Cornwall, *Praying the Scriptures* (Creation House, 1990)
Richard Foster, *Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home* (Harper, 1992)
Romano Guardini, *Prayer In Practice* (Pantheon, 1957)
Jeanne Guyon, *Experiencing God Through Prayer* (Whitaker, 1984)
David Hansen, *Long Wandering Prayer* (Bible Reading Fellowship)
Jane Holloway, *Prayer For Amateurs* (Hodder & Stoughton)
Timothy Jones, *The Art of Prayer* (Ballantine, 1997)
Lyn Klug, *Praying : Meeting God In Daily Life* (Augsburg Fortress, 1995)
Kenneth Leech, *True Prayer* (Harper, 1980)
C.S. Lewis, *Letters To Malcolm* (Harcourt Brace, 1964)
Leanne Payne, *Listening Prayer: Learning to Hear God's Voice* (Baker)
Bjorn Pedersen, *Face To Face With God In Your Church : Establishing A Prayer Ministry* (Augsburg, 1995)
M. Basil Pennington, *Centering Prayer* (Image, 1980)
Joseph Schmidt, *Praying Our Experiences* (St. Mary's Press, 1989)
Kenneth Swanson, *Uncommon Prayer: Approaching Intimacy With God* (Ballantine, 1987)
Theresa of Avila, *The Interior Castle* (Paulist, 1979)
R.A. Torrey, *The Power Of Prayer* (Zondervan, 1955)
Alvin VanderGriend w. Edith Bajema, *The Praying Church Sourcebook* (Church Development Resources, 1997)
Norvene Vest, *Gathered In the Word : Praying the Scripture in Small Groups* (Upper Room)
C. Peter Wagner, *Churches That Pray* (Regal, 1993)
Timothy Ware, ed., *The Art of Prayer: A Orthodox Anthology* (Faber and Faber, 1966)

There's also a list of books to help you pray without ceasing.

Good links to websites on prayer

A good way to learn about Christian prayer practice is to set aside some time each week (say, an hour), and go down the list. Check the site out thoroughly, maybe even save or print some pages for further study. Keep doing this weekly discipline until you've visited each site. If you stop before that, you may not get the full picture.

• Canada In Prayer.
• Centering Prayer, in the manner of Fr. Thomas Keating.
• Charlene's prayer page
• the Anchor Your Life prayer resource site.
• Cross Rhythm's excellently-arranged online prayer rooms. (If you use them, please take the time to choose the right one. And pray for the others you see posted there.)
• A link on congregational prayer practices
• God360, an approach to devotions in which the reader acts it out by doing something. Andy Flannagan put this together somewhere amidst all the stuff he does in youth worship music.
• ePrayer, which has an online prayer request ministry.
• A Greek Orthodox view of prayer
• the Prayer Room Network concept, from House of Prayer, Hartford CT
• an article on Intercessory Prayer
• Benedictine site on Lectio Divina
• an online resource to assist with the Liturgy of the Hours, a daily office which is prayed as a worship discipline by people of many Catholic orders.
• a Yahoo email group for meditations based on the Book of Common Prayer's daily office)
• Wayne Tow and Lutheran Prayer Ministries' prayer resources.
• The Prayer 'n Praise Room, from Peggie's Place.
• Pray the News, guided prayer on stories in the news, by the Carmelite Sisters of Indianapolis.
• Roman Catholic prayers, written prayers from the Catholic tradition and by saints.
• Sacred Space, a prayer guidance site by Jesuits in Ireland. Also, using content from Sacred Space, is Sacred Gateway, a six-stage on-line guided prayer session.
• Spurgeon's sermon on intercessory prayer.
• Sydney (AU) Anglicans' prayer blog
• 24-7 Prayer vigils movement, and the related Boiler Rooms approach to prayer.
• Upper Room, with a Methodist-rooted spirituality. They also have a prayer request ministry, and the new MethodX prayer disciplines site.
• the World Council of Churches' Ecumenical Prayer Cycle
• World Prayer Center, a Pentecostalist prayer effort related to Peter Wagner and New Life Church - Colorado Springs CO.
• World Wide Web Source on Prayer, mostly from the Catholic tradition but with lots of useful stuff. Especially on The Lord's Prayer

Sample congregational prayer ministry pages on the Web :

• Hosanna Lutheran Church, Lakeville MN
• Wonderful Mercy Church, Gilbert AZ
• St. Michael's Episcopal Church, Charleston SC
• Grace Church (Baptist), Edina / Eden Prairie MN

Bible passages on prayer

(click on 'em!)

Isaiah 65:24; Jeremiah 33:3; 2 Chronicles 7:14; Matthew 7:7, 21-22;
Mark 11:22-26; Luke 18:1-6; Luke 11:1-13; John 15:7,16;
Romans 8:26; Ephesians 6:18-19; Colossians 4:2; 1 Thessalonians 5:17-18;
James 5:16; 1 Peter 3:12; Revelation 8:3-4.

SOME QUOTES TO THINK ABOUT

"God does not delay to hear our prayers because He has no mind to give; but that, by enlarging our desires, He may give us the more largely."
Anselm of Canterbury

"Tell God all that is in your heart, as one unloads one's heart, its pleasures and its pains, to a dear friend. Tell God your troubles, that God may comfort you; tell God your joys, that God may sober them; tell God your longings, that God may purify them; tell God your dislikes, that God may help you conquer them; talk to God of your temptations, that God may shield you from them: show God the wounds of your heart, that God may heal them. If you thus pour out all your weaknesses, needs, troubles, there will be no lack of what to say. Talk out of the abundance of the heart, without consideration say just what you think. Blessed are they who attain to such familiar, unreserved intercourse with God."
Francois Fenelon

"Prayers do shape the future in ways different from what would have been the case had no prayers been uttered. And this is because of the kind of God to whom the prayers are spoken. .... God is open to taking new directions and changing courses in view of the interaction between God and people. Yet always in view will be God's salvific will for all."
Terence Fretheim, 'Creating Space In the World For God', in *A Primer On Prayer*, ed. Paul Sponheim (Fortress, 1988) p. 61. Emphasis is in the original.

Heaven is full of answers to prayers for which no one ever bothered to ask.
Billy Graham

"Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees."
Victor Hugo

"The Third Petition of the Lord's Prayer is repeated daily by millions who have not the slightest intention of letting anyone's will be done but their own."
Aldous Huxley

"Think of prayer less as an activity for God and more as an awareness of God. Seek to live in uninterrupted awareness. Acknowledge His presence everywhere you go."
Max Lucado, Today's Christian, November/December 2004

"Even if you did nothing in your meditation but bring your heart back, and place it again in our Lord's presence, though it went away again every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed."
Francis deSales

"You will never learn how to pray until you are moved enough to weep."
(various)

"The pursuit of a prayerful life of simple love and discipline sets us in isolation from and opposition to the mainstream, mammon-directed culture in which we live. We become deserters from technocracy, disaffiliating ourselves from its power, rejecting its false values. To pray is to drop out in the most profound and positive sense."
Kenneth Leech, *True Prayer* (Harper, 1980), p.81

"Prayer is the breath of your life which gives you the freedom to go and stay where you wish and to find the many signs which point out the way to a new land."
Henri Nouwen, *With Open Hands*

"What men usually ask of God when they pray is that two and two not make four."
Unknown

"Prayer puts us on the potter's wheel, reshaping us to be God's vessels. As we beg that God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we present ourselves to God to do it."
from *Churches That Make A Difference*, Olson / Unruh / Sider (Baker, 2002), p. 142

"God has instituted prayer so as to confer upon his creatures the dignity of being causes."
Blaise Pascal

There is a place where thou canst touch the eyes
Of blinded men to instant, perfect sight;
There is a place where thou canst say, "Arise"
To dying captives, bound in chains of night;
There is a place where thou canst reach the store
Of hoarded gold and free it for the Lord;
There is a place--upon some distant shore--
Where thou canst send the worker and the Word.
Where is that secret place--dost thou ask, "Where?"
O soul, it is the secret place of prayer!
Alfred Lord Tennyson

"Learning to pray is the way Christians discover how to speak. The primary language of the church is the way of prayer -- because in prayer the practice and the language are inseparable."
William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas, *Where Resident Aliens Live*, p. 42

"You may pray for an hour and still not pray. You may meet God for a moment and then be in touch with Him all day."
Fredrik Wisloff, *I Believe In the Holy Spirit* (Augsburg)

(Please, take your personal prayer requests to this link.)